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Friday, May 8, 2015

Having
a light energy footprint is good good thing, good for the planet, good for
resale (people are thinking about these issues more and more) and good for your
wallet. Win win I tell you.

When
we built two years ago, reducing our energy footprint was an important part of the
plan and we incorporated these energy saving feautures into our home:

Double glazed glass,
insulated floors, walls and roof.
Insulation to keep us warm in winter and cool in summer

Windows designed to
encourage natural airflow throughout the home.

This works far better than I thought. If we have been out on a hot day and the
house has been shut up we open our bedroom door upstairs and a door downstairs
and you can feel the cool breeze flowing down the staircase. The whole house is cooled naturally in ten
minutes.

Ceiling fans instead
of an air conditioner.

Solar panels to
harness the great natural sunlight we all enjoy for free

A shaded central
courtyard opening onto all our living spaces - provides a cool summer space which cools all
our living spaces.

Did we survive without air conditioning?

Its
been three years and in that time Sydney
has had record heat waves. Did we
survive without air conditioning?
Yes! There were a few super hot
days, but with the ceiling fans on and the windows open we were fine, even on
the hottest, most airless of nights.

Anybody
who has paid an air conditioning bill will tell you just how expensive that is,
so designing a house that doesn’t need any has been a fabulous investment. Investing in solar panels has been another!

Fitting solar panels

Fitting
solar panels on our home was easy to do.
With a largely flat roof (we have a small incline to handle rain water)
the panels were easy to position in a north facing direction and are not shaded
at all.

Solar
panels need to be correctly angled to maximise the energy you can harness. The angle is different depending on your
latitude, and whether you want to save energy in summer (for air conditioning)
or winter (on heating). A rough guide is
your angle should be your latitude +10 degrees for summer savings, - 10 degrees
for winter savings

You
also need to make sure you install enough panels to make a difference to your
power bill. Looking back we could have
installed double, but at the end of an expensive build we spent what we could
afford.

These
are all considerations that will depend on your property and budget, solar installation professionals can help you work through the considerations.

Are the power bills down?

Yes,
perhaps not as much as I would have liked, but it definitely helps.

At
the moment we feed the power we generate back into the grid and are paid for
the contribution. This is not a winning
deal for us as the amount we are paid is far less than the amount we are charged
per unit. Even though (personal gripe)
the power companies can sell green energy for top dollar prices.

I
would prefer to store the energy we generate in a battery that we
use instead of drawing on the grid, but the battery technology is still
expensive and not necessarily efficient.
An investment for the future.

It’s
very satisfying to check the meter on a hot day and see just how much energy we
converted to power for the day!

Types of panel

We
installed the tilted solar panels on top of our roof that you are probably
familiar with. They are on the top of
our largely flat roof and we can’t see them at all which is great because they
don’t interfere with the look of the house.

But
if you have, or are planning, a tile roof, Monier produces a solar roof tile
that can be laid as part of their tiled roof systems, incorporated
seamlessly into the roofline. What a
great idea! The efficiency will depend
on the angle of your roofline and how much of it faces in the right direction
but it’s definitely an idea worth investigating.

Having
lived in our house for 2 years I can tell you that our west facing walls get
blisteringly hot in summer. We faced the
house away from the west heat and only have a drying yard on that side. On some summer days its almost to hot to go
out and hang up the washing, it certainly feels hot enough to fry and egg, and
the wall finish takes a pounding from the sun.
Imagine if we had clad the entire wall in solar panels – no maintenance
and it would generate energy. Perhaps a
solution for the future

At
the end of the day all these features have been very worthwhile, we have a house that lives lightly on the grid, and is comfortable for us and our pockets. We should all be future proofing our homes for energy efficiency.